


The Still of the Night

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 14:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the still of the night, when the moon was high, he almost felt free.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Still of the Night

In the still of the night, when the moon was high, he almost felt free.

He had no name but the name that men gave him: the Huntsman. Wolves did not have names. Wolves did not need names. All that mattered to the wolf was the pack. Humans needed names. They thought it important. Necessary. A way of marking out positions in their world, rank and title and a weapon against others.

The Huntsman was not a name to him.

They called him by that title, but it was not his name. They could not claim ownership of him by giving him a name or subdue him by forcing him to fit into their limited view of the world. A wolf was a wolf, even if he walked upon two legs and hunted with the weapons of a man.

A wolf was still a wolf.

The one they called a Queen had called on him, to do the duties of a beast. She looked at him and believed him an animal. Wolves did not kill for pettiness or spite or pleasure or cruelty. Wolves did not take the heart of another to keep it and treasure it. Wolves killed to eat or to defend. They did not kill on command.

She would have made him into a hunting dog, there to kill by her intentions.

He was not a man to be ordered nor a dog to be cowed, and he had disobeyed. The prey had fled and the heart of a deer was laid in its place.

The heart of the deer was replaced too soon with his own.

She would remember him soon. She often did when she retired to her lonely bed. She called on him, and though he had no desire to be there, she would take him to her bed. In the human words, they called it love-making. He did not know what love was, not outside the circle of his pack, but now, he knew what it was not.

It gave her pleasure to look upon him. To touch him. To make his body respond. He was but a man after all, she told him, as she took what she desired. Men, even half-wild beasts like him, had their needs.

He said nothing to her. He had nothing he wanted to say, and even if he had, he knew she would not have cared to hear it. He simply allowed her to do as she pleased. It was easier than fighting. It was gentler than rebelling. He had felt her hand close too often on his heart to resist anymore.

Pain, he thought as he lay in the darkness, after she was done with him, was used to tame animals and subdue them. Perhaps that was all she saw in him. A creature that could be shackled and broken and pacified.

He saw no shame in it.

Animals had a purity of heart that he had found in only one human.

If the Queen thought him an animal, then let it be so. 

He stood upon the balcony of her palace and closed his eyes. 

The night air was cool on his skin.

He could hear the distant cry of a pack. It was not his own, but it made the hairs rise upon the back of his neck. His own brother's cry echoed too. His brother waited for him, even now, waited for him to return from his very human duty.

He hoped his silence would be message enough, that his brother would know to leave him, to return to his pack. He wished he could lift his head and raise his voice in a cry, but he could no more do that than he could walk out of the palace. She might as well have put a collar on his throat and chained him to a wall. 

The wind whispered around him and he pressed his hands to the stone rail of the balcony. It was a sheer drop below him, and he looked down. 

Though he thought himself a wolf, sometimes, he knew he had impulses that belonged to a man. Men recognised the difference between freedom and captivity. Men recognised the difference between life and death. Men knew that sometimes, those things could overlap.

The invisible chain pulled tight.

She had forbidden him from contemplating escape, even if that escape was as a bloody mess on the rocks far below. She had no fondness for him, but she had no desire to lose a plaything she considered hers. He would be free, he knew, on her terms and no one else's.

Her attention was upon him now, and he stood silently, gazing out into the night.

If she called him, he would come. That was no longer something he had a choice in. 

Her attention waned. She had something else to divert her.

He remained where he stood, letting the night's air touch him and the moonlight silver his skin. In the still of the night, when the moon was high, he wished more than ever that he was free.


End file.
